Selcia Limited, the international life sciences CRO, has appointed John Davis to the newly created role of Director of Discovery.
John joins Selcia from Convergence Pharmaceuticals, where he served as Head of Biology between 2010 and 2013 and was a co-founder of the company.
Dr. Hans Fliri, chairman and CEO of Selcia Ltd., said “We are delighted that John has joined Selcia, his extensive drug discovery expertise will be a tremendous asset to our business. We have an ambitious plan to grow and further develop Selcia’s integrated drug discovery service. John’s knowledge of the international pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries will undoubtedly help us achieve that goal. ”
John’s particular research interests have been focussed on cardiovascular, oncology and CNS disorders. Much of his 20 years’ drug discovery experience was gained at SmithKline Beecham and GlaxoSmithKline and encompasses a range of target classes including ion channels, GPCRs, kinases and proteases.
With his deep experience of target identification through to clinical proof of concept, John has been responsible for the discovery of 11 small molecule and biologic development candidates, and the preclinical pharmacology supporting two assets achieving positive Phase II and one product.
At GSK John was variously director of neurodegeneration research, a director of discovery technologies and director of biology for pain and epilepsy research, and was also instrumental in the formation and management of several large collaborations with universities.
John originally trained as a biochemist and has a PhD from Cambridge University. He was a research fellow at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and Salk Institute for six years before joining SmithKline Beecham in 1993. He has over 100 peer reviewed publications and patents to his name.
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About Selcia
Selcia Limited is a privately held contract research organisation with two operating divisions, Selcia Discovery which provides integrated small molecule drug discovery services to the global life science industry; these services include in vitro biology, screening, fragment screening, medicinal, organic and analytical chemistry, and in vitro ADME/PK evaluation as well as in vivo PK (with a strategic partner) and Selcia Radiolabelling which specialises in 14C GMP radiolabelling.
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